Scott, Pilot, during a Photo Session for the Press outside Mission Control Center, Cape Kennedy, FLA. Mission rules dictated that a firing of the RCS meant that Gemini VIII would have to return to Earth immediately. On their first spaceflight, out of contact with mission control because of their location, with seconds to act before losing consciousness, Armstrong and Scott turned off circuit breakers to the OAMS and engaged the Reentry Control System (RCS) to stabilize the spacecraft. I didn’t … know that at the time, but I figured it out,” Armstrong said. The reason we didn’t hear it is, you only hear when it fires you don’t hear it when it’s running steadily. “…Once we and found out we couldn’t … regain control in a normal manner, we recognized that it was a failure in our craft, not the Agena. Although Armstrong had fired thrusters to gain distance of about five feet from the Agena, which was still rolling and tumbling, the astronauts had no way of knowing if the two vehicles would collide. To the astronauts’ surprise, once they had separated from the Agena, the rate of Gemini VIII’s roll, pitch and yaw actually increased-eventually exceeding a staggering one rotation per second. This enabled mission control to retrieve data from the Agena. Scott had the extreme composure to transfer control of the Agena back to mission control before the undocking maneuver. Armstrong, knowing that he and Scott would soon lose consciousness, made the decision to separate from the Agena. The rate of the movement continued to increase violently. While Scott sent control signals to the Agena, Armstrong brought the joined vehicles under control, only to have them begin to yaw and tumble again. Every time one fired, it was just like a popgun, ‘crack, crack, crack, crack.’ And we weren’t hearing anything, so we didn’t think it was our spacecraft,” Armstrong recalled. They were out right in the nose, in the back. “Neither of us thought that Gemini might be the culprit, because you could easily hear the Gemini thrusters whenever they fired. Because the Gemini’s Orbit Attitude and Maneuver System (OAMS) was not being engaged, the astronauts focused their attention on correcting a malfunction with the Agena. On the dark side of the Earth, with few visual cues, it was Scott who first noticed that the joined vehicles had begun to yaw and tumble about 27 minutes later. This time, the Agena performed flawlessly and Gemini VIII docked successfully with it about six and a half hours after launch. A similar attempt in the fall of 1965 had been cancelled after the Agena exploded while firing into orbit. In 1962, NASA selected the option of lunar rendezvous to reach the Moon, which called for multiple rendezvous and docking maneuvers. Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley.Ĭloser view of the Agena Target Docking vehicle seen from the Gemini-VIII spacecraft during rendezvous in space.Ī successful, repeatable docking maneuver was essential to NASA’s plans to land humans on the Moon by the end of the decade. We felt it was a good representation of what we could expect, and indeed it turned out to be quite similar to what we encountered in flight,” Armstrong recalled in an oral history collected by historians and authors Stephen E. “We had a docking simulator which was quite, quite. Their target, the modified upper stage of an Atlas-Agena rocket, launched earlier that morning. When Gemini VIII launched from LC-19 at Cape Kennedy on Ma54 years ago this month - Armstrong and Scott were both on their first spaceflight, facing a full list of ambitious mission objectives, including the first ever docking of two vehicles in orbit. Scott, two astronauts who would go on to play key roles in later missions to the Moon. Two astronauts on their first spaceflight make first docking maneuver in orbit, save their vehicle from violent roll.Īlthough Gemini VIII was in orbit for just 10 hours and 41 minutes of a planned three-day mission, NASA learned many valuable lessons from it, including about the spectacular abilities of Command Pilot Neil A.
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